There’s a problem with how researchers portray themselves in applications
“An experienced researcher, I have excellent communication skills. I am curious and have good analytical and problem-solving skills.”
“My postdoc position looked at how to deal with…”
“I was involved with…”
“I worked on…developing new methods to … [full stop]”
What’s the problem?
- “An experienced researcher, I have excellent communication skills. I am curious and have good analytical and problem-solving skills.” This is EVERY researcher. You’ve already undersold yourself in your CV profile or your first interview answer.
- “Deal with”, “involved with”, “worked on” – these are generic. As a reader of your CV or listener to your interview replies, I have no idea what you’ve done that is particular interesting, useful or helpful. I don’t even know if you’re effective at what you do.
- [Full stop] – I generally never find out the outcome or impact of these new methods – I am left hanging on a description of the Situation and the Task, a generic description (if I am lucky) of Actions, but rarely encounter the reward of the Results.
In short, people’s narrative of their experience lacks detail. Detail doesn’t mean quantity, detail means PRECISION. “Deal with” and “involved with” and “worked on” lack precision.
They communicate nothing about you except your presence. They tell me nothing about how you think, HOW you “work”, your levels of expertise, your problem-solving efficacy, your ability to get things done, your success in achieving outputs and outcomes OR if it didn’t work out as planned, what tangential benefits occurred and what you learned from the experience that contributed to your professional growth.
It also means I can’t differentiate you from other candidates – there’s nothing that helps me connect with you, evaluate how successful you’d be in the role and as part of my team.
Whether I am having an exploratory consultation about career direction or a practical consultations on applications or interviews, I often find myself going into interrogation mode to develop an in-depth understanding of the unique qualities and experiences of my client (you).
How can you fix this?
Good news – it’s an eminently fixable problem. The process involved seems quite long-winded – how could you possibly use all of the data you generate in a 2-sided CV or 1 page covering letter?
You won’t. You will identify more precise vocabulary to bring your experience to life, you will be able to convey more efficiently how and why you do things instead of blandly describing what you do. You can begin extracting impacts, outputs, and outcomes that are meaningful to varied audiences.
You will develop a more expert understanding of yourself that will increase your feelings of self-efficacy, self-confidence, and enhance your self-image.
Questions (not exhaustive) to ask yourself to stop be generic and start being authentic
Using “I worked on…developing new methods to … [full stop]” as an example, below is a model you can adapt to interrogate the content you’ve been putting in your own CV. Every week, try to set some time aside to collect and tell these stories about yourself. Researchers often say finding a partner to do this with helps.
HOW did you spot that existing methods weren’t working? What EXACTLY was it that made you think existing methods weren’t quite up to scratch? What issues or concerns did you have about existing methods from the literature? What were these issues and concerns? In what ways did you think they were problematic? What could have been the consequences of leaving these issues and concerns unaddressed?
What – in detail – steps did you take to approach the problem of sub-optimal methods? Consider: how did you explore and either discard or follow up on ideas? How did you test out ideas and what process did you go through to make further refinements? How did you identify weaknesses in your newly developing method(s)and address them? Were you reading widely? Thinking creatively? Taking intellectual risks? Was your approach interdisciplinary? Did it involve other people? Did you create or tweak equipment?
What were the outputs and outcomes of your new methods? How did they change things for the better? If it didn’t work out as expected – what did you learn along the way? What were the benefits of going through the process even though it didn’t work out the way you anticipated? What did you learn – were there things you’d do differently?
Resources to help you
IAD Skills Guide and Audit for Research Staff Audit your skills | Institute for Academic Development | Institute for Academic Development
So what? Who cares? The skill of talking about impact The skill of talking about impact
Image: Photo by Etienne Girardet on Unsplash
